And a Merry, Merry Chanukah to One and All!

Bsd
It's Nittelnacht tonight, right?
And although tis technically Thursday all throughout the USA, I'm still posting a family story. Appropriate, as after a few months of travel, I'm ensconced on the family couch again. (Side note: It took 8 hours to fly from New York to Oakland. 8 HOURS.)
I'm a fourth generation Californian on my mother's side.My mother recently told me this story about her paternal grandmother, Pauline. Pauline's parents were divorced. Her mother ran a boarding home in Sacramento, and her father lived in San Francisco. Pauline and her siblings starred in vaudeville shows.
Pauline married a non Jew. Her father refused to speak to her after this. When she had my grandfather, she would take him down to the street where her father lived, and would walk my grandfather in the carriage up and down the street. This is how my great great grandfather knew his daughter had a son.
Pauline eventually divorced her non Jewish husband. She moved into her father's home, and he helped her raise her children.

If You Have Pre Marital Sex, Are You Still Frum?

Bsd

This post is intended for mature audiences. Readers, try to act your age, not your shoe size.

I met a girl in Israel. Frum girl. Dresses more tzniusly than me. Has a boyfriend - in all senses of the word. 

I smiled and laughed and giggled and took pictures of her and her boyfriend and cringed (on the inside). 

Tonight, I regaled my roommate with tales of my trip to Israel, the wedding of our friend, my host's three month old baby, and of course, this frum girl who is having sex.

"Frum?" My roommate raised her eyebrow. "I wouldn't exactly call someone having regular pre marital sex frum."

Well, I would. She's shomer Shabbos. She keeps kosher. She has sex. 

She's definitely breaking Halacha, as she didn't go skinny dipping, as per Frum Satire's suggestion. But I think she's just screwing up, like so many people do. Doing something she shouldn't and rationalizing it. 

Being frum, in my definition, is a matter of numbers. How many Halachos do you keep? You keep everything, but you apply makeup on Shabbos?  Still frum. You keep everything but you buy non kosher candy? Still frum. You keep everything, but you cheat the government? Still frum. 

Not a very good Jew, but still frum.

My roommate disagrees. She defines frum as an attitude. It's a way of life, a moral, ethical, G-d fearing way of life. Play around with it too much, and you're not frum anymore. 

In English, I think frum means being observant and she thinks it means being religious. 

What about you?

A Request

Bsd

Tonight, while I celebrate the greatest joy with one of my closest friends, while we stand under her chupah and look up at the stars over the Negev, another friend - my cousin, my sister, my friend - will be hoping and praying and going through something no one should have to.
Please say Tehillim for Chanan Velvel ben Bryna.

What This Was About

Bsd

This started as something. I was never quite sure what. I took my time choosing the title of my blog. I had to find something that captured the essence of this experiment. Confessional? Journal? Diary? It was an amalgamation of all three, and something more.

It took me time to realize what it was that differentiated my blog from all my other writing. 

People could read it. 

Not that anyone did, back then. 

But - they could, if they wanted to. 

It changed the writing. Forced me to polish my sentences just a little bit more, restrain my flow of thought (or more correctly, emotion). It forced me to make allowances for an audience. 

And then one day I had an audience. 

Five people, maybe. 

But my blog changed. 

It wasn't about writing, anymore. 

It was about the audience. All about the audience. 

My blog was another Facebook, a slower paced IM, another link in the chain of social networking. The comments took on a life of their own, one which I enthusiastically participated in. 

Hiatus. 

It's what I should have posted, but didn't have the patience to. 

I'm taking a blog hiatus.

But whoever cared would figure it out. 

No blog reading or commenting or writing from me. 

I took a break. 

A lot happened. 

I didn't do much. 

Isn't it funny (funny odd, funny strange, funny ironically amusing - not funny haha) how often those two situations occur simultaneously?

Now. 

I'm back. 

Back just before I leave again, at least physically. Off to the Holy Land to celebrate a joyous occasion, which I plan on discussing. (With whom? You, the reader. Not the audience, but the reader? I can dream. This is the easy way out. I need to get published for real.)

This is another introduction, like the one I wrote when I began. 

Appropriate for a new beginning. 

Again. 

Like many of my best posts, the most incoherent and introspective, this has been a 3 AM RANT.

Silence

Bsd

I've been silent

no prayers,

no poems,

silent and lost in my own world

attempting to locate the next step

and take it.

I've been tempted

to break my silence

to speak out

about things that entertain me

                                worry me

                               annoy me

                                comfort me. 

I haven't. 

But this?

How can I not speak?

I spent the first night that I knew what happened

alone.

In a place where no one spoke.

Surrounded by Jews,

all of whom owe so much to Chabad,

and they were silent.

They were silent?

They were silent!

How can I not speak?

Tears rolling down my cheeks

hurting so much 

wanting only to move on

return to the petty, silly distractions

that had silenced me before. 

Ignore it like a paper cut. 

But this is no superficial wound. 

This is my family. 

I held a soft and lively baby this Shabbos. 

I read about a baby whose pants were soaked in his parents' blood.

My nephew's age. 

I read about a woman covered in a tallis.

The last act of a loving husband. 

Covering his slaughtered wife's body. 

How could this happen?

How could this happen,

and I remain silent?

Silent not only in word,

but in deed. 

All the pain in the world I express 

will do nothing for a mother

prematurely torn from her children.

For families bereaved. 

For a community destroyed. 

Gabi and Rivka don't care if I write a poem. 

The silence they wish me to break 

is far deeper than that of words. 

In memory of Rabbi Gabriel and Rivka Holtzberg, in their zechus, so that we may greet Moshaich this year, and reunite parents and children, I take upon myself to daven every day.

                                      

Things I've Learned This Week Or For Lack of A Better Title

Bsd

I have been home for nearly a week, and already I have learned so much! Perhaps this is the reason behind my mysterious silence? Simply that it takes great energy to process the amount of new information and life lessons that I have been receiving, leaving me with little, actually no, time to share it with my devoted readers. But now I feel I have somewhat recovered from this astounding influx of knowledge, and I will present a few of the things I have learned here, for your edification:

A - When removing a small child from the playground against his/her will, a prudent person will prepare themselves with aural protection, lest the ear-piercing, air raid siren imitating wail that will be produced by said small child prove damaging to one's audio functions.

B - If one wakes up, and then proceeds to continue to sleep, general society will not deem this an actual arising, despite one's own perception of consciousness.

C - Upon revisiting childhood impressions as impressed by certain popular novels (e.g. Ballet Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Movie Shoes, etc., or The Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Cinderella, The Boxcar Children, Freckles, etc),one has decided that it is highly unlikely that one will either be "discovered" for remarkable talents in the performing arts arena, or that one will prove to be long-lost nobility and/or relatives of an important personage. As one was quite satisfied with one's family, one spent many hours singing or speaking to oneself in the hopes that someone might overhear and be stunned by one's talent. If one had only learned then what one learned this week....

D - Should sleep threaten to overcome one, one should not succumb to its tempting coils; rather, one should persevere in one's activities, be they of value or not, as long as one does not give in to the temptress of sleep. This is provided that the tempting of sleep occurs in the hours following sunset. Once dawn approaches, sleep no longer holds power, and one may - nay! should! - succumb with alacrity, and do all one can to preserve the state of slumber for as long as one dares.

E - Sand is very difficult to remove from one's shoes. However, removing one's shoes and accompanying footwear (if one's footwear extends past the knee, for example) in order to prevent sand accumulation may cause difficulties when attempting to exit the general area containing sand, or in other words, the playground.

F - When encountering individuals who are acquainted with one, if one should be of a certain age, certain recommendations or hopes will be expressed concerning one's marital state. It has been decided that the best course of action for one is the one presented in the classic film, Madagascar: "Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave." An adaptation of the aforementioned approach will prove satisfactory for all parties involved in any exchange concerning matrimony and one.

Having laid out for you as many lessons as days I have been home, I leave you, my dear Readers, with this last message:
G-d, IT'S GOOD TO BE HOME!!

Seven Years

Bsd
I didn't even know what day it was today. I rushed out to babysit this morning, too tired to turn on my computer. I don't own a radio or a TV. I don't get a daily newspaper. It was any other day to me, one of those funny fall days, where the sky hasn't decided if it wants to be sunny or cloudy, and the air brings with it a taste of winter crispness.
I came home and ate lunch, lolling on my bed, eating sushi and reading a novel. Knowing that I had to return to my babysitting job in a few minutes, I decided to get my first internet fix of the day. And that's how I remembered it was September 11th.
After debating the value of personal remembrances of historical events with a fellow blogger, it seems appropriate to share my own:
September 11, 2001
6:30 AM
The voices from my radio alarm stream through my subconscious until, with a groan, I awaken. Immediately, I realize something is wrong. I'm thirteen, and I don't know what the World Trade Center is. Still in my pajamas, dazed with sleep, unsure of what has happened, I walk quietly down the stairs to my parents' room. My mother sits in her bed, my brother curled up next to her, eyes on the small television that she keeps in her room.
The towers are burning.
8:30 AM
I stand on the lawn in front of my friend's house, backpack in its customary position on my back, feet cold from the morning dew that still lies wet on the grass. We've gathered for our carpool, and are now waiting for our parents to find out if there is school today. If there was a fourth plane. If there are threats on San Francisco. I can't imagine going to school. I can't imagine not going.
10:30 Am
The principal of my school stands at the podium, leading us in saying Tehillim. Twenty five kids sit on shul benches, saying Tehillim. Half of them don't even know why. They won't know until they're old enough to learn about today in history class.
4:30 PM
Driving across the Bay Bridge, Daniel decides that the man driving the gasoline truck next to us is an Arab, and we're all going to die. None of us believe him - but we're not quite sure he's wrong, either.
6:30 PM
My sister calls from Chicago. There are girls crying in her dorm, for uncles and aunts who were in the Towers. We hear the first miracle story from her, the first "I stopped to give tzedakah/drive my kid to school/learn a little/make a phone call/missed the train/lost my job and it saved my life" story. But there are still girls crying.

My kids will never know that you used to be allowed to walk people to the gate and hug them before they went on the plane and watch as that plane taxied down the runway and flew into the air.
Unless I tell them.
Tell your story.